A collection of thoughts
and photos of my life and
work in the northern
Great Plains of
North America
(and occasionally other
places in the world).

Monday, January 25, 2010

Ice Age

Yesterday was a good old fashioned Great Plains blizzard. Although it hasn't been that cold (for us) the snow has been falling and the wind has been blowing producing some rather impressive drifts around town. The Bison seem to have not really noticed except that they did spend much of the day out of the wind on the lee side of a hill. Over the weekend we had about 9 inches of snow although I am not sure how they measured that since the wind was blowing about 30 mph with gusts to 45 mph. Many areas have no snow at all but others are buried in heavy, packed drifts. My neighbor has about a 6 foot drift across her driveway.

I watched them from the window grazing through the snow. They would slowly lower their massive head into the snow while pulling it from side to side to clear the snow from the grass underneath, graze for a bit, and then repeat the motions one step ahead.

I had to get out of the house for a bit so I drove to the other side of the pasture to try to get closer for these photos.

Watching the bison disappear and re-emerge from behind the horizontal snow was very primal. They appeared at home and superbly adapted to deal with the conditions. I on the other hand, didn't really want to stay out in the wind and snow for very long - the snow was finding its way into the gaps between my hat and jacket and my eyelids were starting to freeze shut. Apparently there have been a number of areas that have lost power and the radio announcer stated that due to the conditions they would not even be attempting to fix the problems until today. Our TV (over-the-air) was out all day yesterday and the internet has been sporadic at best.